Trial By Error

Year: 2021

  • A Q-and-A with Tracie White, author of The Puzzle Solver

    Tracie White, a science writer at Stanford University, first stumbled across the story of Whitney Dafoe as an assignment from one of her editors. That initial encounter ultimately turned into The Puzzle Solver: A Scientist’s Desperate Quest to Cure the Illness that Stole His Son, an account that Kirkus called “a complex, well-related story of…

  • National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins on Plans for Long COVID Research

    The US government seems to be taking Long COVID seriously. In December, Congress allocated $1.15 billion over four years for research into the issue. This week, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, announced the agency’s plans for that funding. (I’ve posted his announcement in full below.) In a post last month he…

  • Happy Tenth Anniversary, PACE Trial!

    It’s been ten years since The Lancet published the first results of the PACE trial. Wow! Ten years ago, I was 54 and still a graduate student in public health at UC Berkeley. I was also busy writing stories for The New York Times about the mouse retrovirus study that had roiled the field of…

  • Hughes-Tuller Comment on Wessely-Chalder CBT Study Rejected by Journal, Posted Here

    Last fall, Professor Sir Simon Wessely and Professor Trudie Chalder were among several co-authors of a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The study purported to prove that years of provision of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) to patients with “chronic fatigue” and “chronic fatigue syndrome” proved that the intervention was…

  • New Biopsychosocial Paper on Long-Covid and Somatic Symptom Disorder

    Biopsychosocial Campaigners Target Long-Covid New papers from the biopsychosocial campaigners often provide opportunities to highlight unwarranted assertions, misleading use of data, and—in particular–associations interpreted as if they were causal relationships and not, well, associations. An article co-authored by Trudie Chalder, a professor of cognitive behavioural therapy at King’s Collge London, and published recently in the…

  • An Excerpt from Jamison Hill’s Memoir

    Three years ago, The New York Times‘ popular Modern Love column published a beautifully written tear-jerker by Jamison Hill–a former bodybuilder with ME. The column, “Love Means Never Having to Say…Anything,” described in tender prose how two people with debilitating chronic illness were able to find and nurture a very special love. It was later…

  • Professor Paul Garner’s BMJ Blog Post on His Powerful Cognitions

    Professor Paul Garner, an infectious disease doctor at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, has had a rough time with long-Covid. He has written about his experiences in a series of compelling blog posts on BMJ’s site. At first, he bonded with members of the ME/CFS community and expressed shock at the shoddy treatment these…

  • Professor Lubet’s Inquiry to Medical Center Holding ME/CFS Patient

    Yesterday, I posted my exchange with a spokeswoman for Hennepin Healthcare about Thane Fredrickson, the ME/CFS patient who is under threat of involuntary psychiatric commitment. Today, Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet, e-mailed her the following letter. Dear Ms. Hill: I am a law professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, and I often write articles,…

  • My Exchange with Minnesota Medical Center Holding ME/CFS Patient

    On Monday afternoon, I had an e-mail exchange with Christine Hill, a spokeswoman for the Hennepin Healthcare in Minnesota. Thane Fredrickson, an ME/CFS patient, is currently under threat of involuntary psychiatric commitment. Because of patient privacy concerns, it was clear the medical center would not be able to provide any specific information. But reporters are…

  • Game-Changing Articles in The Guardian and The New York Times

    The relationship between what is being called long-Covid and ME/CFS (and its variants) is complex. The conditions overlap in ways that are poorly understood, and the mechanisms through which they produce such significant disabilities remain elusive. As the coronavirus pandemic enters its second year, many tens or hundreds of thousands of people around the world…

  • New Study Reports First-Hand Accounts of 1955 Hospital Outbreak

    The name myalgic encephalomyelitis is inextricably linked with an outbreak of what appeared by all accounts to be a viral illness at London’s Royal Free Hospital in the second half of 1955. More than 200 people, most of them female staff and students, fell ill. Some reported long-term complications. Although no pathogen was ever identified,…

  • Tack’s Take on 2020 Studies; Professor Edwards’ Statement to NICE

    I have been laying low during the recent holiday and coup season. Today I’m watching the impeachment hearings. And I might find it challenging to get back up to full speed until after New Year’s–which for me will be January 20th, or whichever day the White House is finally de-Trumped. For now, here are a…